“He would have killed me!” Montimort shouted. “And I had to get the key. I had to. With it, we gain the crown. And then she can be queen of Neverwinter!”
Startled out of his own dark suspicions, Sarfael asked: “Who?”
“Elyne!” said Montimort.
In that one word, Sarfael realized, were all the answers to Montimort’s unusual behavior. The boy merely acted to help Elyne.
“She’s the closest descendent of Alagondar left in the city.” The words tumbled out of Montimort. “Arlon Bladeshaper and even Lord Neverember can’t truly trace their lineage back that far. Everyone knows it. They all gossip about it. How she could lead the Nashers if she wanted to, that she has more right than Arlon, but she won’t push herself forward.”
Sarfael remembered Elyne’s explanation of how she formed her school of “elegant fighting” for the young Nashers, of how she wanted to keep her former playmates from being killed by their attempt at rebellion. But I, she had admitted, am a very bad Nasher. I wouldn’t know what to do with the city if I had it, she once said.
“Montimort,” Sarfael said very gently, because the boy shook with his passion and because he suspected that Montimort had paid a terrible price for his newly acquired skills. “Montimort, she doesn’t want to be a queen. She has no ambition in her heart for such a thing.”
“She must be queen,” Montimort cried out. “Elyne must take the crown. She’s the only one. If she doesn’t, it’s all for nothing. I murdered Karion for nothing.”
The boy collapsed in a heap, weeping in lost and wild abandon. After a long moment, Sarfael crouched down beside him and placed his hand on Montimort’s shoulder. “We will go to Upland Rise. You’ll try your spells. Perhaps it won’t work. Perhaps it will. Then let others decide what to do with the crown of Neverwinter.”
Let Dhafiyand have it, Sarfael thought. If the boy succeeds, I’ll steal it from them and give it to Dhafiyand. And make sure that Elyne and all the rest stay out of his net. Perhaps a trade: a pardon for them, in return for a crown.
“Step careful,” Mavreen warned him as he fingered the hilt of her sword and contemplated tricks to deceive a master deceiver. For Sarfael could think of no more terrible fate for Elyne than to be queen of that broken city, with its warring factions and its dark history of shifting and ever deadly politics. Those who ruled Neverwinter or sought its throne were doomed, Sarfael thought, and, like the boy who wept beside him, he would do whatever he could to save Elyne.
The wind blew cold across Upland Rise. In the gray gloom of the predawn morning, the treeless hill reminded Rucas Sarfael of a graveyard. The stumps of the trees stood as memorials for Neverwinter’s gentler past, when it had once been a wooded parkland for the amusement of its citizens.
The white fog off the river ringed the base of the hill, leaving them stranded atop like mariners shipwrecked upon some island. All the Nashers were there: Elyne, Arlon, his followers, and her students. Even plump little Virchez, the Neverwinter merchant with ties to rich relatives in Waterdeep, had screwed up his courage and stood with the rest, a lantern in one hand and a wavering sword held not too steadily in the other.
Glancing at the crowd, Sarfael almost regretted that he had not sent word to Dhafiyand to stop them. It would have been so easy for General Sabine to march out a few Tarnian mercenaries, arrest the lot, and confiscate the box. He could have slipped away in the confusion and later arranged for Elyne and Montimort’s release. Arlon, who was blustering at the others and shouting orders, he would cheerfully have left in some dungeon until his temper cooled.
But, of course, if he did that, then he wouldn’t know if Montimort’s spell worked. He wouldn’t know if the box could summon the crown. And Dhafiyand most explicitly ordered him to watch and wait, to not act. Oh, he was so sick of orders and waiting. But, oh, he did want to see if a crown would appear.
“Curiosity,” Mavreen mocked him once, “will kill you quicker than any sword thrust. You insist on sticking your nose around every dark corner just to see if there is something there that will bite it off.”
Well, he’d never paid any attention to her reproaches then and, as much as he missed her, he certainly wasn’t going to let the memory of his first and last student stop him now.
And, if there was a crown, and he could steal it, he gained a much more powerful stake in the game of Neverwinter’s dark politics. With a crown, he could buy freedom for his friends.
Montimort finally seemed to have the spell started. The boy stood in the center of a ring of nervous Nashers. Torches flared all around him as he directed them to cast their light on the box that he held straight out from his body.
He turned the box so the emerald glittering in the center of the lid faced him and began to read the words inscribed around it. Montimort intoned the spell slowly, the Thayan rite making his voice sound harsher and deeper than ever before. As he read the spell, the emerald began to glow brighter and brighter.
With a shout, Montimort ended the spell. The emerald flashed so brightly that Sarfael closed his eyes automatically.
When he opened them, he saw Montimort tumble back from a tall green figure holding the box in her two hands.
Dressed in vest and trousers, the emerald woman regarded them all without expression on her perfectly carved features.
Montimort seemed as stunned and surprised as the rest of them, but the boy visibly swallowed his fear and spoke sternly to woman. “Bring us the crown!” he commanded.
She nodded once with regal solemnity. A glowing green circle appeared at her feet. The jewel woman stepped through it and disappeared.
The wind ruffled their cloaks. The crackle of the torches was the only sound on the hill.
Then, because it was a gathering of Nashers, they all started speaking at the same time.
“What was that?”
“Who was that?”
“Did we get the crown?”
“Now what should we do?”
Arlon yelled at them all to be quiet, which made everyone talk in hissing whispers.
Elyne moved next to Sarfael and spoke in normal tones to him. “Perhaps that will be the end of it,” she said, and she sounded relieved. “The spell failed.”
“Not yet,” Sarfael said, pointing at the glowing green circle of light still visible on the top of the hill. Montimort watched it with narrowed eyes, paying no attention to the resounding rumpus around him.
The circle flashed and the Nashers fell back. The green woman again appeared on the top of the hill. She held out her emerald hands, the dark wood box balanced across her palms.
Montimort reached out and took it. Another brilliant flash, as bright as lighting but silent as the grave, and the woman was gone. The emerald on the center of the box gleamed for a moment with an internal light, but then the glow faded until it only reflected the glitter of the torches.
Stunned, the Nashers waited in silence for Montimort to speak.
Sarfael glanced at Elyne. Alone, of all of them, her eyes were on the boy’s face rather than the box in his hands. “He’s all right,” Sarfael reassured her.
Finally, the impatient Arlon blurted out, “Well, do you have it? Is it the crown?”
Blinking his eyes as if he had just woken from a dream, Montimort shook the box slightly. Something heavy rattled inside.
“Open it,” Arlon commanded.
“No!” Sarfael said, stepping forward. “Not here. Not in the open and the dark. Let’s take it somewhere safe.” Somewhere I can steal it, he added to himself, and before you can all get a good look at it.